It will be remembered that on a certain morning in July, after Hugo had finished pasting a notice on a mirror in one of the common rooms, in the presence of a pink-aproned waitress, Albert Shawn entered, and kissed the pink-aproned waitress.  So far as possible, whom Albert Shawn kissed he married, and he had married the waitress just the week before Christmas, and this was she.  Simon had objected sternly to the mesalliance.  It seemed shocking to Simon that a rising detective should marry a girl who waited on shop-girls.  Hence the drama.  Hugo had positively refused to allow an open quarrel between the brothers, because of its inconvenience to himself, but he could not prevent a quarrel between Simon and Lily—­such was her name.  They met now for the first time since the marriage, and Lily’s demeanour may be imagined.  She gazed through Simon as though he did not exist, and passed magnificently onwards as soon as the throng permitted.  She was Mrs. Albert Shawn, as neat as ninepence, as smart and pert as a French maid out for the day.  She drove in hansoms, and she had a five-pound note in her pocket.

Albert had been granted two weeks’ vacation for his honeymoon, and he ought to have resumed his duties of detection that morning.  The honeymoon, however, had lasted only nine days, and the remaining five days of the period had been spent by him in some secret affair of his own, an affair which had ended in an accident to his left foot, so that he could not walk.  The consequence was that, on this day of all days, Hugo’s was deprived of his services.  Lily was, perhaps, not altogether sorry for the catastrophe which kept him a prisoner in the nest-like home in Radipole Road, for it had resulted in this excursion of hers to the sale.  Albert had bidden her to go to buy a stole and other things, to keep her eyes open, and to report to Hugo in person if she observed anything queer.  He had even given her a pass which would ensure her immediate admittance to any of Hugo’s private lairs.  Therefore, Lily felt extremely important, extremely like a detective’s wife.  She knew that Albert trusted her, and she was very proud that she had not asked him any questions concerning a matter exasperatingly mysterious.  Albert had taught her that a detective’s wife should crucify curiosity.

She fought her way to a counter in the fur department.

‘The guinea stoles?’ she inquired from a shopwalker.

‘I—­I beg pardon, miss,’ said the shopwalker.

‘Madam,’ Lily corrected him.  ’I want one of those silvered fox-stoles advertised at a guinea.’

‘You’ll probably find them over there, madam,’ said the shopwalker, pointing.

‘Aren’t you sure?’ she asked tartly.  ’I don’t want to struggle across there and then find they’re somewhere else.’

The shopwalker turned his back on her.

‘Well, I never!’ she exclaimed to herself, and decided that Albert should avenge her.